The Fatal Overthink

I just pulled a devastating weekend doing Instant Films. A great film resulted despite getting kicked out of two locations, but somewhere in post production, the wrong file type was exported, and the film could not be included in the festival screening.  We ran an awesome 48 hour marathon, but I tripped at the finish line.  This Halloween short was cursed in every way, and I knew it the second I drew the script, which the author later said he added as a hasty afterthought turning it in: “The Fatal Overthink.”

I said aloud when I drew it: “You could call every Instant Film this.”

And in spite of, or because of, all the preparation we had, our over-thinking was dangerous, but not quite lethal (yet, to my knowledge).  Even the awesome graphic designer Bob Kopp who volunteered out of nowhere to make the title cards separately, that I didn’t even know until he and his wife Amy turned in their work, said the title bedeviled them mercilessly all weekend, their inspiration thwarted, cruelly and gradually as time slipped away.   (My attempt at Henry James-ian prose, tedious creepy.  Kind of what this weekend was like: Henry James meets 24.)

Because the Instant Films Fest isn’t done until people see the final product, here is the world premiere of “The Fatal Overthink.”